Deborah Bloomfield

There’s nowhere on Earth quite like the Atacama Desert. Literally: it exists in a basically unique meteorological void, rendering it all but devoid of water and home to almost no life at all.  But “almost no life” is not the same thing as “no life” – and increasingly, science is turning up ever-more bizarre and […]

This week, Ice Age Amazonian rock art has been interpreted and appears to depict shamans spiritually transforming into animals, a 35,000-year-old saber-toothed cub has been found mummified in permafrost, and the first amber fragments have been recovered from Antarctica, providing information about the continent’s ancient forests. Finally, we ask if animal testing is entirely necessary […]

Vast amounts of money and brainpower in the effort to achieve sustained, controlled, nuclear fusion. Many designs have been proposed, and even tried, but tokamaks are comfortably the most popular. The name may be familiar, but not everyone knows what they are.  What Is A Tokamak? Stars heat matter to such high temperatures that electrons […]

Like all beautiful things, the Mediterranean Sea isn’t going to be around forever. As two of Earth’s great tectonic plates crash together in super slow motion, there’s a strong chance the Mediterranean Sea could be literally wiped off the face of the planet in the distant future. The continents of our planet are in a […]

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to [email protected]. Why does Jupiter look like it has a surface – even though it doesn’t have one? – Sejal, age 7, Bangalore, India The planet Jupiter has no solid ground – […]

Kimchi, kefir, kombucha – fermented foods aren’t new, but now you can find them everywhere. Sure, more people could be catching on to how delicious they are, but there’s something else at play too: fermented foods are often touted as being good for your gut. But how true are such claims? What do we mean […]

Have you ever felt that snow only seems to fall in certain places? Perhaps you missed out on snow days as a kid, while your friend always seemed to be snowed in. Did your pal happen to live near a factory? Because new research suggests that might explain why. The study, which was conducted by […]

While most of us will have heard of gray wolves – and the political rollercoaster that is their protection status in the US – they aren’t the only wolf species in the country. In a tiny pocket of North Carolina can be found the red wolf (Canis rufus), and it’s one of the most endangered […]

It might sound far-fetched, but recent research suggests that dogs’ and humans’ brains synchronise when they look at each other. This research, conducted by researchers in China, is the first time that “neural coupling” between different species has been witnessed. Neural coupling is when the brain activity of two or more individuals aligns during an […]

The Moon was volcanically active for a long time, but if we look at its mysterious far side, we now know exactly how long that was the case. Thanks to samples collected by the Chinese Chang’e-6 probe, researchers have been able to estimate that this volcanic period lasted for at least 1.4 billion years. Chang’e-6 […]

We’ve all been there: you wake up one morning, the sun is shining; you open your mouth to greet the world and out comes a glorious… croak? Losing your voice is a pretty common predicament – but what’s going on, physiologically, to cause your sudden silence? And should you ever be worried about it? Where […]

What will you take away? When choosing the best scientific event to attend each year, people shouldn’t just look at the list of exhibitors and featured topics, but at the added value a person can gain once the show is over. Not simply what the convention provides, but what the tradeshow promises you will take […]

Fraud might be a crime, but it’s hard to deny it inspires some creativity – and in the case of an alleged insurance fraud scheme that took place in California earlier this year, “creativity” can mean dressing up in a bear costume, ruining your own car, and ending up in handcuffs. That’s according to the […]

A rare deep-sea shark has been caught off the coast of Albania exhibiting an unusual skin pigment disorder that has turned it ghostly white. It is the first known case of this species of piggy-faced shark having leucism. The angular roughshark (Oxynotus centrina) is an odd sea beastie. They look like someone smashed the idea […]

If you’ve ever shared a bed with someone who grinds their teeth in their sleep, you’ll be familiar with the unmistakable and unsettling sound of enamel on enamel. Alternatively, perhaps you’ve woken up with an aching jaw, only to be told by your partner that it was your grating dentition disturbing the peace in the […]

The recent death of a red panda kit at Edinburgh Zoo has prompted fresh calls for tighter restrictions on fireworks in the UK, after veterinary experts concluded that it was likely her death was due to stress caused by fireworks. Three-month-old kit Roxie had recently lost her mum, Ginger, but appeared to be doing well. […]

The fossilized remains of an entire prehistoric ecosystem, complete with footprints of extinct animals, have been discovered by accident in the Italian Alps. Dating to 280 million years ago, the creatures that created these vivid impressions were alive during the Permian period, a time long before dinosaurs emerged in the Triassic period. The stunning find […]

Some animals have a curious way of emitting light that we humans can see when we shine a blacklight on them, a pastime that community science website Finding Fluorescence is no stranger to. They recently reported that they’d identified 15 new species that exhibit biofluorescence, providing new insights into its possible ecological functions. When light […]

Here at IFLScience, we like to answer all manner of questions about the world around us. Sometimes that means tackling the big stuff, and other times it means violating the purity of our internet history to find out how snails have sex. You’re welcome. Finding a partner The vast majority of land snails are hermaphroditic, […]

Galaxy 2MASX J21240027+340911 has been known to have an active nucleus for a decade or so. At its core, a supermassive black hole was feeding on some interstellar material, gas or dust, that got too close. Recently, astronomers have discovered a repeating signal from this object, suggesting more complexity: It is not one but two […]